The Kerala High Court Tuesday expressed serious concern over reckless driving by bus drivers and speeding cars and the rising number of road accidents in the State, calling for concrete measures to prevent further loss of lives [Suo Motu v The Chief Secretary and ors and connected cases].

A bench of Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan V and Justice KV Jayakumar suggested permanent cancellation of driving license or impounding offending vehicles to curb road mishaps.

"If it is done repeatedly, your licence will go, or vehicle. Some action will have to be taken. Everything is being taken lightly and the corrective measures are not being taken," the Court remarked.

The Court was hearing a suo motu petition concerning road safety in Kerala.

"We can't just permit all the children, women to fall prey to the buses and go underneath the tyres and die. Why would we want to do that? Come up with something," the Court said.

Justice Vijayaraghavan questioned the authorities over their failure to effectively implement existing road safety guidelines.

"We went through the PWD manual, we went through the MoRTH guidelines, the IRC, everything is there, but nothing, you know, on the ground, nothing is there. That is what we wanted to tell you."

The Court questioned Transport Commissioner Nagaraj Chakilam about the existing timetable system for buses and asked whether unrealistic schedules encourage speeding.

Chakilam submitted that a digital platform called Kerala Bus has been developed to integrate bus timings and GPS-based location information. He also stated that the bus schedules would be revised this month.

The Court, however, questioned the failure to curb reckless driving and incidents of speeding despite repeated accidents.

"You just tell us how over-speeding happens in Ernakulam. Lot of people die every day in Kerala. So you just tell us why this is happening and what measures you have taken to reduce the same," the bench told the commissioner.

The Court also called for immediate identification of those driving high-speed cars.

"If at night, a car like Porsche or Ferrari, whatever cars are going out and if driving at breakneck speed, it should be identified and within two days we should be able to inform the appropriate authority as well as the owner of the vehicle about the violation," the bench said.

Meanwhile, the Court examined the affidavits filed by the authorities and observed that several issues highlighted in its previous order remained unaddressed.

The Court particularly stressed the need to develop an Integrated Road Safety Monitoring platform and asked the Additional Advocate General Mohammed Shah PA to take the lead in initiating the process.

It also directed the Director General of Police to nominate an officer familiar with road safety issues to join the steering committee proposed for developing the platform.

The matter will be heard next after three weeks

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